East Coast outages: thousands still without power

July 5, 2012 12:00:00 AM PDT

WASHINGTON --

Power has been restored to more than 90 percent of customers in Washington, D.C. and parts of Maryland after severe storms ripped through the area last Friday.

At one point, more than 2 million people were left in the dark from storms that converged on Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., Indiana, Ohio and New Jersey. The storms are being blamed for 26 deaths.

The number without power was dropping, but not quickly enough. More than 500,000 customers were still without power as of Thursday morning, including almost 230,000 in West Virginia.

Meanwhile, a new round of summer storms was making its way across Michigan and Ohio, knocking down trees and power lines. Some of the new outages came in areas that already had power restored.